Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current guest host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

The theme for Song Lyric Sunday this week is “Clothing/Hat/Pants/Scarf/Shirt/Shoes/Tie.”

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Still going with the theme in the group’s name instead of the song because who doesn’t love Men Without Hats?

The Canadian group had already enjoyed success in Canada with The Safety Dance when it was released in the U.S.  in March of 1982. It became an even bigger hit in the U.S. spending four weeks at its peak position of number 3 in September and October 1983, and staying on the Billboard Hot 100 for 24 weeks.  It also reached number 1 on Cash Box, as well as number 1 on the Billboard Dance Chart.

FUN FACT:

• One of the theme words, hats, is actually used in the song in the second verse – “And we can dress real neat, from our hats to our feet…”
• The song was written by lead singer Ivan Doroschuk after he had been kicked out of a club for Pogo dancing. (A  dance in which the dancers jump up and down, while either remaining on the spot or moving around; the dance takes its name from its resemblance to the use of a pogo stick, especially in a common version of the dance, where an individual keeps their torso stiff, their arms rigid, and their legs close together. People sometimes got injured when pogoing, but, more often than not, pogoers who fall to the ground are helped up instead of getting trampled.

The music video is notable for its English folk revival imagery, featuring Morris dancers, Mummers, Punch and Judy and a maypole. It was filmed in the village of West Kington, in Wiltshire, England. Ivan Doroschuk is the only member of the band actually to perform in the video. Doroschuk, and others in the video, can be seen repeatedly forming an “S” sign by jerking both arms into a stiff pose, one arm in an upward curve and the other in a downward curve, apparently referring to the first letter in “safety”. The Morris dancers seen in the video were the Chippenham Town Morris Men, performing a dance called Monkton Park. The dwarf actor is Mike Edmonds, whose T-shirt in the video shows the Rhythm of Youth album cover. The identity of the young blonde woman by the name of Jenny seen dancing in the video remained unknown until 2013, when she was identified as Louise Court, a journalist who served as editor-in-chief at Cosmopolitan and became a director at Hearst Magazines UK in 2015.

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for Nesie’s Place!

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Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.